The need to protect sensitive electronic equipment or components against unauthorized access is well known. For example, electronic systems or components used for civilian applications can contain sensitive, proprietary information that needs to be protected against unauthorized access. For example, financial institutions and corporations use computerized systems to protect sensitive information (e.g., personal data, customer data, financial data, financial transaction authorization codes, authentication procedures, security passwords, etc.). Such sensitive information may be stored in alterable semiconductor memory devices (e.g., flash memory device, EPROM, EEPROM, PROM, RAM, DRAM, etc.) or memory components of integrated circuits. Any compromise in the security of the sensitive data contained in such memory devices or integrated circuits can result in significant tangible and intangible losses to the financial institutions and corporations, such as, for example, financial losses, losses due to fraudulent transactions, business losses, losses due to compromised customer lists and financial data, losses of institutional or corporate integrity, losses of commercial confidence, and losses due to adverse publicity. Thus, electronic systems or components containing sensitive information used for civilian applications need to be protected against unauthorized access.
Intruders may attempt to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information or structures in electronic equipment or components by physically accessing the electronic equipment or components involved. For example, an intruder may attempt to gain access to sensitive electronic equipment by opening or removing a wall of the enclosure (e.g., chassis wall) for the electronic equipment, or gain access to sensitive data in an electronic component (e.g., flash memory, integrated circuit, etc.) by creating a portal through or removing the encapsulant surrounding the component or assembly in order to expose the interconnect and/or address busses in the component. If such attempted intrusions are successful, the intruders can observe and learn about the sensitive features in the electronic equipment, or reverse engineer the electronic components in order to access the sensitive data via the exposed interconnect and/or address busses in order to learn about and/or compromise the operations of the components or associated systems. Therefore, given the substantive, continuing need to protect such sensitive electronic equipment or components (and any sensitive data contained therein) against unauthorized access, and the need to render useless the sensitive data that might be obtained by such successful unauthorized intrusions, it would be advantageous to provide a system and method for enhancing the protection of sensitive electronic equipment or components against unauthorized access, that can detect and also respond to unauthorized intrusions into the enclosures for the sensitive electronic equipment or components. As described in detail below, the present invention provides such a system and method.